


Reckless and Desperate

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Older Man/Younger Woman, Romance, post-episode 3x02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 06:27:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4993762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She crosses her arms. She's not angry Coulson. But he's here. He's always here. "I get it, it's not like I can force people to <i>not be afraid</i> of me."</p>
<p>(Post- 3x02 fluff)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reckless and Desperate

With all the commotion she forgot she had to eat. She normally packs snacks (or Mack does, with that annoying big brother thing he has going on towards everybody) but she honestly didn't think bringing the damn rock to England was going to require her powers.

"If you want to stay with Simmons I'm sure Fitz won't mind," Coulson says when he walks into the kitchen-thing zone area of the plane. She is still getting used to the new space. It's not that she misses the Bus (bad, bad memories) but she's still a bit wrong-footed by the new surroundings.

She gestures towards the bowl of cereal (she's not _exactly_ sure what time it is, but she's pretty sure it's not breakfast-food time). "I would have collapsed on the spot, and I don't think Fitz and Bobbi need to take care of an extra patient."

Coulson looks at her with a soft, worried expression, a version of the one he had when he kept calling her old name.

"Are you all right?" he asks.

"The headache is going to last me a couple of _years_ but other than that..." she shrugs.

He sits with her and makes a gesture like he wants to touch her head to check. It's just a moment and it's subtle but it makes her feel weird. She doesn't want people to think they have to take care of her, even though her head almost exploded tonight.

"Did you see Bobbi's simulation?" Coulson asks, looking elsewhere.

Daisy rests her elbows on the table, leaving the food to one side, hunger suddenly gone. "Yeah, I did," she replies. That's a rabbit hole she's too exhausted to explore, even with Coulson, whose presence would surely make the whole ordeal less painful. "I can't think about that just yet. When we get back, I promise."

He nods. "We'll figure it out."

It would sound like platitude between them, at this point, but he always means it. Always.

"What's with the stop?" she asks.

Coulson looks guilty for some reason. 

"Professor Randolph wanted us to drop him off as soon as we could and since Simmons is stable and in no urgent need of–"

"Okay."

There's a beat.

There's a weird beat.

Coulson's eyes are doing something weird.

_What?_

"He also told me what he knew about the Inhumans."

She narrows her eyes at him.

It had not occurred to her to ask because she was very purposedly not thinking about that.

"He told _you_? Why did you let him go? I could have talked to him."

Coulson shakes his head. "He didn't want to see you. Be around you."

"Why?"

"The stories he heard about the Inhumans – they were brought by the Kree to other planets to help them in their war."

She looks at his words carefully. She has the feeling they are not Randolph's words, not exactly.

"That's what we were made for, wasn't it? But I thought the Kree had to shut down the experiments, that they didn't really use as weapons –"

"Not according to Randolph."

_I see_. "I think I can fill in the blanks," she says. Though, if she has learned something from history, the truth is way worse than she has imagined.

The soft buzzing of the plane as it flies can't hide the noise Coulson is making as he swallows.

"I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't have left him just leave. But he did help us. I should have told you first."

She crosses her arms. She's not angry _at him_. But he's here. He's always here. "I get it, it's not like I can force people to _not be afraid_ of me."

She's not just talking about the Asgardian, of course.

"It's not that."

"Yes, it is," she catches herself rising her voice a bit. "And every time I feel like I could be okay with what I am – every time I start to actually believe the things I told Joey, and Lincoln. Like today. I was happy I could help with my powers and I kept thinking about Jiaying, how she was the one who taught me how to mantain a note with my vibrations."

"Your mother was a strong leader, it's natural that you –"

"My mother was a monster," Daisy says quietly.

Coulson looks taken aback, as if she had just insulted him.

"I know," he agrees, like he doesn't want to go against her. "But she wasn't born a moster, she just..."

" _Became_ one? Well, I wasn't born a monster either and now I wonder what the hell I am."

"You're not a monster," he says and it should sound like a platitude to her but it's Coulson so it doesn't. It shouldn't work, it shouldn't make her feel better, hearing those words from him, it _shouldn't_.

"I opened a portal to another world with my powers tonight," she tells him, conspiratorial, lowering her voice like it's a secret. There's a bit of wonder in her voice, too, she can't help it, but there's fear in that wonder, there always is.

"Yes. And you saved Simmons, and Fitz too, with those powers."

She bites the inside of her cheek. It's not Coulson's fault, of course, that she keeps feeling not-right about it. "Yeah."

" _Skye_."

"Daisy."

Realization dawns. He really doesn't realize he's doing it.

"Damnit," he says under his breath, making a gesture with his fist like he wants to hit the table but he stops himself at the last moment. "Damnit." The softer, to himself: "It's _Daisy_ now."

Suddenly a lot of the tension disappears, it kind of fizzles away from the moment, she is no longer thinking about being the recipient of a legacy of terror, or why an Asgardian like Professor Randolph might be scared of her. Suddenly it's just about Coulson and her, and while that has never been exactly about _normal_ , it makes her feel a bit more comfortable in her own skin.

"I'm so sorry, I swear I'm not doing this to upset you," Coulson tells her. He looks mortified. That makes her feel a bit better.

"I know," she nods, gentle. She's not angry. It's somehow endearing. "But I wonder what Andrew thinks of that."

Coulson looks away. "Like I would let Andrew analyze me."

"It's Andrew, you don't _let_ him."

He chuckles. "I know what he would say, anyway."

"Uh?" She lies back in her chair, curious.

Coulson makes a tired gesture, moving his hand over his face.

"He'd say I have trouble adjusting to changes but I'm pretending I'm okay with them, so everything that's going on, with the team, with May and Simmons not being here, with my arm, I'm in denial and it cracks when I try to adapt to your new name."

He says it in one go and though it makes sense to her he doesn't like he believes it that much.

"And would he be right?" Daisy asks, testing her theory.

"No, actually he wouldn't," Coulson says quietly. "I'm having trouble with it, yes. But it's not about anything else, it's about Skye."

"About _Skye_?"

"A lot of horrible things happened to Skye and me since we've known each other," he tells her. "And at times I wondered if I didn't make her life harder, Skye's life. At times it felt like the universe was set on keeping us apart. But Skye and me, we always found a way back to one another. What if it's not the same with Daisy?"

She tilts her head to one side, considering the man.

"So you're afraid? Is that it?"

"Of course it's fear," he admits.

Hey, she thinks. This stuff is for us to decide, not the universe.

"You're not going to lose Daisy – _me_. You're not going to lose _me_."

Coulson drops his gaze, like he can't believe that.

She kisses him. She takes his chin in her hand and presses her mouth hard against him so there's no room for doubting her intentions – Coulson would probably do that, wouldn't he, if she left him that out. He makes a surprised noise but kisses her back immediately. She's a bit shocked that she can go from self-hatred to absolute exhilaration in a few moments but she's not complaining. Coulson kisses her like he loves every bit of herself she's not so sure of and suddenly she feels very settled by the idea, very stable, everything stops shaking under her feet and under her skin.

When she pulls back he looks surprised by the kiss, but then he makes no attempt to stop her when she brushes her lips against his for a moment.

"Doctor Garner already thinks I'm reckless," she says, close to his mouth. "He'd probably say I'm being positively suicidal right now."

"And what was it that he said about me?" Coulson asks, his voice uneven but charming.

"That you are desperate," she reminds him, drawing the line of his throat with her finger. "Are you? Desperate? Right now?"

" _Very_ desperate," he says and moves to kiss her again.

She laughs instead, pulling away.

"Good line, Phil." He looks dumbstruck and Daisy decides to take pity on the man. She takes his hand in hers. "I still want to go with you to your bunk, even after that."

 

+

 

"Nice pad," she says, looking around the tiny bunk. "I don't think I've ever been here."

Daisy talks because Coulson looks incredibly uncomfortable standing there in the middle of his own room, waiting for something.

"Do you want something to drink?" he offers.

And that might deflect the tension a bit (even if there's no much room to sit down and drink on the bed) but Daisy is in no mood to wait. She shakes her head. She goes to him, because she can see he has no intention of moving towards her, and she tries kissing him a second time, seeing if she changes her mind, seeing if this is more than her just being reckless about things again.

"Uh."

"What?" Coulson asks when she ends the kiss.

"Just checking something," she tells him.

She pushes him away to pull her tank top over her head. She's torn between wanting to speed things up now that she knows how she feels, to skip the awkward bits – like this bit, did he really offer her a drink just now? – and wanting to draw out the prologue because she's lacking a bit of confidence here. Coulson has an interesting reaction to seeing her in her bra. That helps with the confidence part, actually.

She smirks at him. "Come on, Phil, it can't have been _that long_."

"No, it's just–" and he makes a cute tiny frown like he suspects Daisy is just messing with him. "You're just very..."

She steps into his space again, and Coulson's hands fall naturally at her sides, now naked. He moves his right hand across her back and Daisy shouldn't have made fun of his reaction earlier because there's a certain weakness in her knees upon being touched like that. A lot of it is other stuff but at lot of it is just Coulson.

"Very?" she asks, regaining her smug stance but also wanting to hear how hot he finds her.

He nods slowly. " _Very_."

He doesn't miss his cue this time and he kisses her. It makes a difference that he initiates it this time. She can feel it in the way he vibrates against her – careful but excited. 

She pushes him away, giving him a " _your turn_ " look.

He undoes the buttons of his shirt one by one, shyly. She steps back, giving him his space and not getting impatient when he doesn't look at her all through it.

Once he's done taking off his shirt he hesitates, his glance inadvertedly drawn to his own lef hand.

"Do you want to take that off, are you more comfortable...?" Daisy asks.

"I normally take it off if I'm alone, but if you–"

She shakes her head. 

Coulson gives himself a moment before he goes to the tiny drawer in his bunk and opens the box where he must normally keep his prosthetic. Daisy has seen it in his office. He disengages the hand and it makes a swishing sound. She realizes how very deliberatedly Coulson has tried not to show his stump when she is present. The idea makes her sad for a moment.

When he turns around he's already searching her face for a reaction, to check if she thinks he looks ugly like this. Daisy knows all about thinking you're an ugly thing in this world so she goes to him and grabs him gently by the neck and brings him to her lips.

"This isn't strange for you?" Coulson asks.

She's not sure if she means hooking up with her boss, with a guy twice her age, or with someone without a hand. Wow, there are many things Coulson might justifiably feel insecure about here. She didn't think about that. She didn't think about anything, she just jumped. It was just the way he was afraid something might happen to pull them apart – she feels that way too. She can't imagine anyone she'd rather be with, at any time. At a time like this, too. That's why she kissed him. She wishes she could explain that but she's too tangled up, too locked in her own head right now; all she can do is brush her fingers gently over his chest (careful not to touch his scar) and take him by the hand and lead him to his bed. 

" _Strange_ is not exactly the word I'm looking for here," she reassures him.

Coulson lies back on the covers, letting her guide him.

"I have to tell you, it's been a while so I might have forgotten some of my classic moves," she jokes – her nervousness is not a joke, though, she doesn't want to disappoint Coulson – as she works her pants down her hips and kicks them to the floor.

"What are your classic moves?" he asks, propped on one elbow.

"There's this..."

She pushes him onto his back, hand open-palmed against his shoulders, and she climbs with him, stradding his lap. Coulson groans, which is a good start, and she gets some of her old cockiness back and starts grinding down on his lap. In those jeans of his she can't really tell if he's hard or not but judging by the sounds he's making when she rolls her hips against him she's going to assume he is.

"Good move," he says, lamely, a little breathless.

Something about the way he curls his fingers around her hip makes her slow down and stop.

"What are _your_ moves?" she asks.

He moves swiftly, grabbing her hips and lifting her with no trouble at all, sitting up and rolling Daisy to one side.

One of his many moves, she hopes when he crawls down the bunk and between her legs, pressing his mouth against the fabric of her underwear and mouthing her (right) name at her.

"Now that is _classic_ ," she jokes as she feels his nose nuzzling the inside of her thigh.

"I'm good at classic," he tells her, pulling down her clothes.

She chuckles, and then she goes really quiet when he presses his tongue against her.

It's fun, in a way sex hasn't been in a long time. It's about getting to know each other. Which is funny, because Daisy can't think of another human being who has ever known her better. Not Miles. Not her parents. This guy.

And she can still hear the horrible pulse inside her head – it's been here the whole time – but it gets quieter, easier to ignore, as Coulson brings her to orgasm slowly but in a moment, carefully but knowing what he's doing. It becomes a bearable hissing under her skull.

When Coulson finishes with her he laps his tongue over her gently, easing her down the aftershocks.

"Thank you," Daisy tells him, considering him, when she has her fingers twisted lovingly into his hair.

"What for?"

"Well, I was going to say thank you for telling me I'm not a monster but I don't think that's something you want to be thanked for," she says and Coulson shakes his head in agreement. "So thank you for _that_."

He smirks. " _That_ I very much gladly will take credit for."

"Come here," she says.

She kisses him, feeling that particular closeness after you've had an orgasm with another person. She feels a bit juvenile about it, lying kissing on Coulson's cheek and forehead to thank him.

His jeans take a bit to get rid of, she feels awkward at the fumble.

"I'm sorry, I don't have protection," Coulson tells her. "I didn't think I'd need it again."

Daisy narrows her eyes at the self-pity. Come on, man.

"Wow, a bit young to hang up the gloves like that, aren't you?"

Coulson laughs, pressing his mouth against the hollow of her neck as he does. For a moment it's almost like he has the same powers she has, she can feel the rush of somebody else vibrating that loudly against her.

"You're not only the Director of SHIELD, you're officially this gifted person's handler," she reminds him. Coulson winces a bit and Daisy can see all the worries of the title – the fear that she might taking advantage of her, that he has too much power here – cross his mind like a black cloud. "So you know for a fact I'm protected on that. As for the rest... I trust you. Will you trust me with the other stuff?"

He nods and lines their bodies together.

Daisy thinks about how this is possibly the worst time to start something like this, the worst time to risk the most important person in her life, the worst time to complicate the things inside her head even more than they already are, but as soon as Coulson moves into her none of that matters, it never mattered in the first place, if she's honest.

 

+

 

She can't sleep anyway, the rhythm of that awful pulse still echoing inside her head.

She slips out of the bed, which is easy because there's not much bed to begin with and Coulson definitely wasn't thinking he'd have to share it, when he picked this bunk for himself. Daisy thinks she has made a clean escape (carefully resting the stump of Coulson's left arm back on the bed) until she feels fingers lightly wrapped around her wrist.

"It's been a while since a woman left me in the middle of the night," Coulson says in the darkness, and lets go of her arm.

She waits for her to sit up on the bed and turn on the light. His hair is all messy and he does look like a guy who've had great sex just a couple of hours before. It's not a bad look and Daisy feels proud of herself.

"I didn't want to wake you."

He gives her a sleepy smile. "That's usually the point."

"I meant – I'm not running, I promise," she strokes his chin and he becomes cat-like, stretching towards the warmth. "I wanted to go take a look at Simmons. Make sure she really is back and it wasn't a dream."

"Okay. That's a good idea."

Daisy sits on the edge of the bed, running her fingers up and down Coulson's arm. It feels weird, this after-the-fact, because they had been moving towards something then and now she just can touch him intimately because she wants. His body seems to shift against her touch, chasing it.

"I was thinking maybe we could have breakfast together afterwards," she tells him.

His eyes widen a bit, but he's obviously trying to hide it. 

"Breakfast? Just like that?"

She nods. She doesn't tell him she's in love with him. Which, well, _obvious_. She hopes he gets it, anyway.

"Yes, just like that." She touches his hair. It's hard not to notice the extra grey in his sideburns. "I have no intention of slowling this down."

"That sounds reckless."

She nods against his face, pressing her nose into his cheek. "What about you? Still feeling desperate?"

Coulson shakes his head, moving his arms to her back.

"No," he says. "I'm reckless too."

She likes the sound of that.


End file.
